promised herself to a woman she didn’t know. At least not this
part of herself. The other Giana? She wasn’t here to make
those promises. It was now her duty to keep them. Had she
just made the worst mistake of her life? One glance at
Coralyn’s ashen cheeks and her eyes, fixed firmly on the rings
on her finger, and her gut said no. Her instincts, every single
one of them, said to protect this woman, and this was her way
of doing it.
As Coralyn slid a gold band down Giana’s finger, she felt
like a run-down house. One that needed more than a nice
facelift to save. One where the structure underneath turned out
to be not so salvageable and the whole thing had to come
down and be rebuilt.
She had a gut feeling that hitting her head could either be
the end of her or the beginning of something brand new. The
best thing she’d ever done. Not many people got to start fresh.
She could be the person she’d always wanted to be, if she
figured out who that even was.
“I now pronounce you married,” Carol said, tactfully not
saying wife and wife because that sounded weird. Still, it
would have made Giana smile. She was smiling anyway. “If
you want to kiss, you can do that now.”
Giana wanted to take Coralyn’s face and crush her lips to
hers. She wanted to steal her breath and replace it with her
own, drive her to her knees with the force of that kiss. Bend
her backwards under the unyielding will of it. She wanted to
scald her and remake her. She wanted to claim, captivate,
capture. It scared her, that impulse. There was no way Coralyn
was strong enough for it at the moment, and they weren’t
alone. What her new wife needed was gentleness and